


{the idea of an island}

by without_wings (liam22)



Category: NCIS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-24
Updated: 2009-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 16:31:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1655093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liam22/pseuds/without_wings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-Truth or Consequences.  Prompt: stranded on the side of the road for [community profile] dailyprompt</p>
            </blockquote>





	{the idea of an island}

She can’t see anything through her swollen-shut left eye. There was nothing to see anyways. She’s already memorized the layout of her cell: the bumps and dips of the dank earthen floor; how it’s seventeen paces from one corner to the other; and the afternoon light castings shadows over her that resembled a skeleton from a Tim Burton movie (and if that didn’t make her think of the life she left behind then nothing would). There are bars on the window instead of glass, and during the middle of the day when the wind is the strongest, dust blows in heavy whistles, stinging the back of her throat with each breath. Sometimes she thinks what would happen if she stopped breathing all together.

Sometimes she hates the fact that she is stronger than that.

First, she was Mossad, and then she was an NCIS agent. But now, she is just Ziva, an island all to herself. No one was coming for her.

Pain, torture, is something she’d been long since normalized too. The harshest torture consisted of the little things, not the big ones. She was too well trained to give in to heavy blows from well-placed fists, too experienced to fall for the trick of drugs that loosen the tongue. And well, the thing they want to know…they will have to kill her first.

She knew she would end up here all along; knew when she stood on the tarmac with Gibbs and manipulated him into leaving her behind. She was keeping them safe then, just like she is keeping them safe now. They tie her down, pushing on her dislocated shoulders until her knees collapse beneath her. It takes less and less as the months go on. Not all things change though. She still falls into the chair with the same heavy weight. The men handcuffing her to the wooden chair, so tight that she can’t feel her fingers or toes five minutes after, still laugh at the splinters that stick in her skin. The chair is old, wobbly, and she has a bet with herself that it will break before she will. It’s something to hold on to. 

There is nothing else. She wouldn’t be rescued. She’d already cut all her bridges.


End file.
